journal 1994 Providence

Sometimes it’s difficult to distinguish between reality and the surreal, especially at night in the city, a strange city outside of what you know. I recall one such night in Providence Rhode Island. It began easy enough, after a Max Creek show— when it was as if my reality suddenly shrunk up and died and released my mind into a realm of fantasy and I became lost and disoriented.

Well, I will begin at Point Ed— the show had ended and the crowds had left Lupos Heartbreak Motel and spilled out on to the street. Earlier Dano had parked his truck to our good fortune, along the curb outside the motel. So on our way to the truck, this is where things got unrecognizable and sketchy.

We left the motel most likely out the back door and we walked around, looking for the truck but we couldn’t find the truck nor could we find the main street where we parked. We guessed the time was just past two am and we hadn’t discussed yet if we should drive or not— we had been drinking and dancing with pretty girls, you know, the Dead Dance— that easy loose muppet movement type dance. Here outside we are alone and it appears in a back alley among rusted cans, newspapers and broken bottles. Ahead, we spot 3 people, huddled together, a blond girl smoking a cigarette, a second girl listening as the man is speaking. We approach them and an alley light reveals their faces. The closer we get to them, the slower it takes us to get there as if we were suddenly caught in slow motion. They are pretty girls with friendly faces. The man recognizes us from the show. He looks familiar to me to but I don’t remember at which point we had crossed paths.

“How’s it going, man?” I asked.

“Pretty good, man. Pretty good,” he said.

“Do you know where the main road is?” asked Dano.

“Yeah, man. It’s this way. Follow us. We’re heading there now.”

We follow toward the alley exit. Dano tugs at my arm.

“Hold on. I got to take a piss.”

I stop. He disappears behind a smelly dumpster, the air stinks of sweat and piss and blankets us like subway heat. I watch the three people walk away, growing smaller beneath the dots of light. For some reason, perhaps restlessness I continue to follow them. The lights beam brighter ahead.

“Jimbo! Jimbo! This way!”

The blond girl hears Dano and turns around and sees me approaching. She starts running away, they all do, but for some reason I can’t stop walking, as if pulled magnetically toward the light to which they are running into— the blond girl turns around again, sees me and runs faster— the three of them like nightime joggers until finally disappearing around the corner of a black brick wall.

“Jimbo. Come on. The truck is this way.”

Dano pulls at my arm.

“Come on Jim. We have to get out of here.”

I look at Dano as if for the first time since we arrived, a little giddy from a bottle of wine. Now his eyes gleam like rings of silver and the dark of his eyes are stretched out, bloated as big as they could possibly be.

“Where are we going?” I asked.

“It’s this way— listen, whatever happens we have to stick together okay? Don’t go wandering off. Stay close.”

“You’re right.”

Now we are walking backwards in the opposite direction of where we thought we should go.

“Where are we going now?” I asked.

“To the truck.”

“Oh.”

We finally reached the main street but still can not find whereabouts of the truck. Though bright, the lights are a pale sickly yellow, like pus; streets are empty now— all the cars once lined along the curb, now gone. Stores are dark and locked up. On the far corner, a man appears, his shadow big and green cast upon the car he stands beside. I look at Dano who's gaze goes beyond the man. The whites of his eyes twitch, it seems. As we reach the man, his tall figure suddenly and assuredly takes on a familiar identity— a real person with a real history.

“Ed!” I called.

In fact, it was Ed. He had told me about this show only a few days ago and wrote down the directions. He is a Max Creek groupie who now works the shows for the band— selling t-shirts, bumper stickers and tickets. He is a well known connection throughout the “Max Creek family.” He follows the band from gig to gig. I first met Ed in 1993 when we worked for ITI in Needham. He lives in Randolph so we bump into each other sometimes.

“How did you like the show?” he asked.

“Oh man, they were great,” said Dano.

Ed stood a little over 6 feet tall but more amazing was the size of his stomach— he’s not a fat person but his stomach was round and bulging and seemed to exist outside of him, big as a dome. He gazed down upon us, eyes half shut and red from pot or acid.

“I’ve got tickets for tomorrows Connecticut gig,” said Ed.

“Now that would be cool,” said Dano. “But— I don’t think it would be cool to drive now.”

“Where are we?” I asked.

“Out front,” said Ed.

I laughed. “What an unusual concept.”

“So you guys are going home then?”

“Yeah. I think so,” said Dano.

“Thanks for tonight, Ed. You pulled through for us,” I said.

“No problem.”

“Jim— look it’s right there,” said Dano.

“What is?”

“The truck!”

I stepped aside from Ed and Dano was now laughing and pointing toward it. There it was, right where we left it.

“Well, Ed. Thanks again.”

“Glad I could help.”

We drifted over to the truck. As Dano searched his pockets for the keys, I was slightly swaying, by the passenger door and smiling. A procession of cars suddenly appeared, engines purring, passing us as if a parade and turn left on to a side street just ahead of us— perhaps it’s an alley. I wander over to see where they are going. Eight, nine, ten vehicles, up the alley, maybe to a big after party, eleven, twelve, thirteen, passing beneath the yellow glow of a storefront billboard.

Dano’s in the truck, watching the cars when I rejoin him. The headlights mark the street in long slow lines.

“You want to see what’s going on over there?” I asked.

“I don’t think so. I don’t even think I can drive.”

The cars disappeared and the silence rang in my ears like a scream.

“Wow.”

“Jim. I’m fucked up.”

“What do you think we should do?”

“I don’t know.”

We laughed at our predicament. We stared out the window, dumbfounded and more confused now that we were in the truck. I fumbled through my shirt pocket for smokes. Though I only had two pockets, it took five feels before I realized they were not there. As I looked up on the dashboard, another caravan passed us but this one moved slower, maybe cautiously or searching for something, someone. The passengers were black men and looked angry and stared us down as if we were trespassing their territory. The dark cars were packed with angry faces and eyes. Suddenly I was afraid, a fear that ripped through me like a stream of bullets. Dano too.

“Let’s go. We’re out of here,” he said.

He turned the key, hit the pedal and we were off. He had no idea where to go so he just went straight. However the further we went, the darker the neighborhoods became and people appeared on the streets hanging out on corners smoking and glaring at us. I had visions of entering the Bronx. The Bronx of Providence. The street became smaller and the red lights kept us from gaining momentum.

“I don’t like this. Come on. Come on,” said Dano. He looked in the rear view mirror; I turned as well and damn, it seemed some of the cars had followed us.

“We’re dead,” I said.

The light switched green and Dano punched it. It wasn’t long before we came to another red light. To my right, homeless milled about or slept by trash cans and to my left hookers patrolled the corner. It turned green, we drove on. Like a flash, Dano hit the break and cut a mad U-turn, all in one sweeping motion.

“How the fuck do you get out of here!” he said.

“This is fucked.”

It seems gangs are surrounding us— on the sidewalks, or in the cars behind and in front of us. The road seems to just go in circles and we are helpless and lost and I imagine riots and fires springing up, and gun shots. “Man we’re sitting ducks,” I said.

“Fuck. I think we were just here,” said Dano.

In the distance appears the vague outlines of high rise buildings and the state house. I think we are close to being right back at Lupos, as if I remembered it from a dream.

“I can’t believe I’m driving.”

“We are looking for the cheese.”

Dano turned left onto a big open main street that curls slowly to the left and just ahead above us were highway signs, route numbers. Dano slumps back in his seat and drops one arm from the wheel.

“You recognize anything?” I asked.

“I have no idea where we are,” he said, laughing.

The road is brightly lit and it looks like a highway, not our highway home but a highway nonetheless— the road has brought us out of hell and a safe feeling nestles in my brain as I look out window and see patches of grass and fall trees, even breakdown lanes lend support and comfort. That said, we are still lost and confused and highly intoxicated— time has taken on a foreign dimension too— as if everything, this minute and every minute after were taking place outside of myself, in a different reality. I begin to wonder if what took place actually did and if not, are we even on the highway or part of some big incomprehensible dream.

“Jimbo, check it out.”

“There’s a woman in the breakdown lane thumbing.”

“Let’s pick her up,” he said.

He pulls over and stops. I roll down my window. She’s a thin black woman in a mini dress and smiles at us.

“Where you going?” I asked.

“I’m just going to the store for a pack of cigarettes,” she said.

“Hop in.”

Now there is no back seat in Dano’s S-10 so I start to clear off the middle of the seat but there’s so much junk and no way I’m going to sit on a clunky tool filled seat and deal with the shifter when Dano changes gear. “Here— just sit on my lap,” I said.

She climbs in and nestles into my lap. Her legs are skinny and she is so light it’s like she’s my book bag resting on my thighs.

“Thanks.”

We pull back on to the road and it occurs to me that perhaps— probably, most definitely, she’s a prostitute. Dano’s smiling happily, watching the road and talking to the woman, probably happy to have someone new to talk to. At this point I’m starting to lose my sensibility. It feels like a leech is sucking the blood from my brain. I remain silent and inattentive to their discussion.

Earlier, we had discussed the X factor and we agreed that it made life worth living, the X factor being the Unknown, the risk, the adventure. Dano didn’t want to drive all the way to Providence, booze up and then drive home— he had wanted to get a room. I understood. We didn’t have that much money either to get a room, so we wondered should we even drive to Providence, an hour from home to dig Max Creek and drink without a nearby place to crash after the show. In a flash of realization, Dano retaliated against his own thoughts. “Fuck it,” he said. “Let’s go and see what happens— hell, I’ve slept in my truck a hundred times. Let’s just go. Fuck it.”

I crossed my two first fingers together into an X. He studied me and shook his head.

“The X factor, Dano— the Unknown.”

“Hear here,” he said.

As I sat in the truck remembering events that seemed to have occurred in a different life time, suddenly we were no longer on the brightly lit highway; we were right back in the slums. And I realized my hand was beneath the woman’s shirt caressing her small breast.

“I’m afraid I don’t have much there,” she said.

“Shit— listen lady, how do we get back on the highway?” Dano asked.

All around us, again, evil faces gazed at us— fear returned, a real fear mixed with resignation— a resignation that if something violent happened to us, it was now far beyond our control— that it was our fate in the X factor zone, no more or no less; and a wave of stoicism flowed through me and it calmed my fears. The woman had no idea where we were or pretended not to know.

“Listen, get out. We have to get out of here,” said Dano.

“No. You can’t drop me off here.”

“Well, you want to come to Boston?” he asked.

“Come to Boston with us,” I said.

Dano swung the truck around, banged a hard right. We passed a gang of black men hanging out on a street corner. A red light stopped us, alone on the dreadful street. It occurred to me in a new state of paranoia, that perhaps, this woman was part of some conspiracy to rob us— that we were lured into some evil trap and somewhere out there her gang was waiting, like sharks to feast upon us— to rob, plunder and perhaps kill. I no longer wanted her on my lap.

“Shit. A dead end,” said Dano.

He swung around again, quicker this time and the tires screeched on the street. Such madness and fury in my mind— and his too I think, a thousand angry eyes glaring and we had their woman in our truck, on my lap. Dano slowed down the truck in an abandoned section of neighborhood, littered with trash bags and broken crates. He stops the truck.

“Get out,” he said.

“What do you mean?”

“Let’s go— come on, get out,” he said.

Before she has a chance to protest, or pause long enough for her gang to overtake us, I opened the door and threw her from my lap on to the street.

“You boys know how to take care of a lady,” she said, frowning.

I slammed the door and we drove off. Somehow, we did manage to get out of there and back on to the highway, heading north to Woonsocket but man, it wasn’t easy and that’s all I got to say about that.